


Communion

by ifnot_winter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Broken Families, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Emotionally Repressed Winchesters (Supernatural), Episode Tag, Episode: s01e22 Devil's Trap, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, Hurt, Injury, The Winchesters' (Supernatural) Terrible Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 23:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16649668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifnot_winter/pseuds/ifnot_winter
Summary: Sam reaches out to place his fingers against Dean's face, cupping the faint glitter of stubble and garish spread of bruises, blooming like blurred, blighted pansies--purple, yellow, green--across the angle of Dean's cheekbone, ever so carefully in his hand. His thumb brushes the edge of Dean's mouth, smoothing fitfully, tenderly, at the phantom quiver and memory of blood smeared across that full lower lip, as though by doing so he can rub the images out, blot them from his mind and forget Dean's eyes as the demon leaned in close, too close and spilled words like poison from their father's mouth,“They don't need you. Not like you need them.”+Coda toDevil’s Trap.





	Communion

**Author's Note:**

> Could be read as Wincest or Gen, depending upon personal preference; there’s nothing explicit. Spoilers for _Devil’s Trap_. My humble contribution to the many amazing s1 finale codas out there.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. I wish.

Originally published 05-27-06, part of an ongoing project to shift all of my ancient fanworks to ao3.

\+ + +

Dean's staring at him. Has been for a while, just staring, watching, mapping in a way that makes Sam wonder what it is exactly that Dean's seeing. Sam can see the wanting in Dean's eyes, the tight rein on Dean's prized self-control loosened by whatever cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics and sedatives the clear, steady drip of the IV is plying him with, and Dean's just staring, because he can't muster the energy to speak, keeps his eyes open by sheer stubborn force of will, wanting, needing something, anything from Sam, whatever he can get. _And isn't that how it's always been_ , Sam thinks, a sharp twinge adding to the dull ache of his taped ribs and all of the nasty, raw, hurting things kept carefully caged behind them, and vows, vehement to combat the restless twist of cruel whisperings and crueler visuals constantly taunting, tearing, toying with him at the corners of his mind, _Not anymore_.  
  
Sam reaches out to place his fingers against Dean's face, cupping the faint glitter of stubble and garish spread of bruises, blooming like blurred, blighted pansies--purple, yellow, green--across the angle of Dean's cheekbone, ever so carefully in his hand. His thumb brushes the edge of Dean's mouth, smoothing fitfully, tenderly, at the phantom quiver and memory of blood smeared across that full lower lip, as though by doing so he can rub the images out, blot them from his mind and forget Dean's eyes as the demon leaned in close, too close and spilled words like poison from their father's mouth, _“They don't need you. Not like you need them.”_  
  
Dean's still staring at him, intently enough to bring Sam back to himself, and leaning into Sam's touch to the best of his doped-to-the-gills ability, lips slightly parted, breath warm and moist though his lips are dry against the calluses on Sam's thumb, and Sam shivers ever so slightly, and crushes the memory, locking it back behind the bars of his ribcage with the rest of it.  
  
The stoned contentment in Dean's eyes--as though this, Sam's hand against his face and Sam's eyes on him, is _exactly_ what he wanted, everything he needed, ever, at all--brings forth the ghost of a smile that creeps its unerring way into the green of Sam's eyes; makes him wonder briefly whether he's not the only one working the Jedi mind tricks. Not that Sam can make it work, not when it counts, and God if that doesn't just open a whole 'nother can of hurt. He swallows around sudden tightness, but Dean's stare brings him out of it again. He curls into that gaze, the familiarity of its warmth and the love that never ceased to linger there like an old, well-worn blanket, all the more beautiful for the frayed edges and threadbare patches.  
  
All the more beautiful, because it’s just _Dean_ , and Sam has finally completed the circle and come to realize what was before him all along, that Dean is never _just_ , but always so much more; those eyes and that mouth and the way love always spills around the edges even when Dean tries to mask it behind all those other feelings he doesn’t let matter.  
  
Sam’s fingers slip-slide with the slowness of rain in summer, along the well-loved lines of Dean’s throat, broken capillaries barely brushed for fear of adding one more measure of hurt when the numbness wears away and Dean reads the truth of John’s death from his eyes, stillborn on the air because Sam can’t bear to think the words for the jagged pain of them in his throat and in his mind and in those sharp tight spaces between breaths where Jess and Mom and the ashes of his dreams of a _life_ hide like the grit at the bottom of Pandora’s box, key lost somewhere along the endless miles of stars and sun and highway.  
  
He traces the edge of the thin white gown, brilliant against the bruises and winding lines of scratch-scraped-broken skin like a road map of grief and all its tiny ecstasies, none in their path left unscathed. His touch moves tentatively, revolted by the stiffness of the material--more paper than fabric, really--and the memory of death lingering in the corners of another hospital room, until reaching the safety of Dean’s skin again, the curve of dormant muscle in his bicep and the familiar smoothness of inner arm marred by strange tubes and wires and the measured, sterile beeping telling Sam like the soft throbbing beneath the tender skin covering the tendons in Dean’s wrist that his brother is stable, steady, still here.  
  
_Still here. Still here. Still here_. Sam’s breath slides into tandem with Dean’s pulse, calming and rhythmic; hypnotic, like a half-captured dream of the vague warmth his mind tries to define with the term _mother_ , the intonation always unfamiliar and slightly off.  
  
His fingers slide between Dean’s, palms disparate in size but perfectly matched. And between them, the press of lines foretelling the possibility of a future, and the marriage of their heartbeats like the fluttering of tiny wings; Hope peering shyly around the edges of the breaking of one more dawn.  
  
\- - -  
  
_your steady hands cradling my grateful skull:_  
_were you taking in my face to save an image_  
_you've rarely allowed yourself after leaving that cold alcove?_  
_am i a photograph you gaze at in moments of weakness?_  
_you ordered me off my knees into your arms._  
_wasn't to beg that i knelt; only to see you once from below_  
_tried to say something that filled my mouth_  
_and longed to rest in your ear._  
_don't dare write it down for fear it'll become words, just_  
_words._  
  
\-- from ‘ _communion_ ’ by viggo mortenson


End file.
